Tweet Last week’s announcement of the disruption of the Zeus botnet system by Microsoft sounds like good news at first glance, but as you read more closely; you realize the complexity and sophistication of modern cybercrime operations and wonder if we’ll ever be really safe from them. This excerpt from their press release gives [...]

Tweet Privacy appears to be kind of a “personal thing” and some of my readers are more upset than others about the recent policy changes at Google. To be fair, it’s not just Google but the whole prying Internet experience that gives some the creeps. As I said last week, one way to [...]

Tweet There always seems to be tension between preserving our privacy and getting the services we want and have come to expect in the information age. What do we have to give up to get what we want? We also want services to be free if possible. We have come to expect a [...]

Tweet Most of my readers know that I am a big advocate of free software (free as doesn’t cost anything, period). I have recommended many free downloads from this space, but today I want to direct you to an unsuspected source for some great freeware. The software giant that we all love to [...]

Tweet Who doesn’t like Chinese takeout? The fried rice is fine, but who ordered the malware? Data from Symantec suggests that more malware comes out of China than any other country, more than a quarter of the worldwide total. The U S is still the biggest target of malware attacks and also initiates around [...]

Tweet They say that “confession is good for the soul”! Another old saw is “Do as I say, not as I do”! It surely hurts to be the victim of a mistake that you have warned and even exhorted others to avoid. I never begin a Word or Excel class without telling my [...]

Tweet When is enough enough? When am I throwing good money after bad? Technology moves so rapidly today that we’re forced to evaluate repair or replacement options with a careful eye to obsolescence. I cannot give you hard and fast rules about all techie repairs but I’ll relate some scenarios that clients have [...]

Tweet Scams in the “Good Life City”? What is this world coming to? We’re always hearing in the news about swindles that happen elsewhere in our country, but what about right here in Albany? Let me just share a few that I’ve recently heard from clients and readers. The latest one is a [...]

Tweet Is a tablet a PC? The short answer is no! …but they are similar in that both are computing devices that can do some of the same things yet also do some quite different jobs. Some of the headlines from post holiday sales would have you believe that tablet s are soon [...]

Tweet Written by Jim Hall. Email your questions to geekspeak@mchsi.com . You can find Jim online at HallsTrainingSolutions.com Help it’s late Saturday afternoon and my child has to turn in a PowerPoint project on Monday morning. …and we don’t have PowerPoint on our computers at home. What shall we do? First of all [...]